The generation of sound by light is known as the photoacoustic effect. Briefly, absorption of electromagnetic radiation in a sample leads to localized heating of the sample. The heated region of the sample will expand due to thermal expansion, and this expansion can launch acoustic waves in the sample. Imaging of the resulting acoustic waves is often referred to as photoacoustic imaging. PA imaging has been used for imaging sub-surface defects in materials for non-destructive evaluation.
Recently, PA imaging has been employed for biomedical applications. In these applications, typically a short laser pulse is transmitted into tissue. The introduced light energy is absorbed in a different manner by different parts of the tissue. The optical absorption depends on the wavelength of the light and the absorption properties of the medium. The regions with stronger absorption characteristics in a tissue generate stronger acoustic signals via the PA effect. By collecting these light-induced acoustic signals using an acoustic transducer, one can construct an image that is a representation of light absorption characteristics of the sample. One example of this approach is to image the sub-surface microvasculature in tissue by detecting blood oxygenation, which is usually a sign of angiogenesis indicating a cancerous lesion. In this example, the increased light absorption of the oxygenated blood at a certain wavelength is used to create a high-contrast sub-surface image.
Typically, such conventional PA imaging for biomedical application requires physical contact of the acoustic transducer to the patient, or the use of an impedance matching liquid or gel between the patient and the transducer. The reason for this is that if air (or any other gas) separates the patient from the transducer, there will be a large acoustic impedance mismatch at the patient-air interface, which will significantly and undesirably reduce the acoustic signal. This is explained in greater detail in connection with FIG. 1 below.
Some workers have accepted this loss due to acoustic impedance mismatching in order to realize various advantages of a non-contact configuration. For example, an article by Kolkman et al. (Feasibility study of non-contact piezoelectric detection of photoacoustic signals in tissue-mimicking phantoms, Journal of Biomedical Optics v15n5, Sep/Oct 2010, pp. 055011-1 to 055011-4) considers the imaging of a subsurface feature (artificial blood vessel in a phantom) where a 7.5 mm air gap is present between the phantom and the acoustic transducer. In this experiment, the optical illumination is provided to the side of the phantom.
However, there are aspects of PA imaging which do not appear to have been appreciated in the art. Accordingly, the considerations described below provide an advance in the art.